More CNC goodness

[Jerry] retrofitted a Supermax Mill that he purchased from a friend. The main problem consisted of the original controller failing so he used some Pixie boards and a PC to get the system back up and running.

But thats not all. [Jerry] also retrofitted his Monarch lathe (yes, not a CNC, but are you really going to complain) by replacing the original Ward-Leanard motor generator with a 2 kW brushless AC servo.

The Harford HackerSpace group claims their CNC can kick any other CNC’s butt! Currently it lifts up to 65 pounds, but is still accurate enough to make ninja throwing stars. The only problem left is naming their CNC, any suggestions?

[Ciric] has finished up the hardware side of his CNC project. However the software is still being worked on, but because it is his own stepper control board it might take a while. The good news is the controller and software are planned to be released free.

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9 thoughts on “More CNC goodness”

Dude! The hackerspace I started one year ago today just made it on HAD. I never thought in a million years that I would have a CNC to play with. It was a great learning experience and an excellent group project. Every Hackerspace should have one.

I’m looking forward to that PIC-based CNC, mainly because it looks like something I could actually build, instead of hundreds of dollars worth of laser-cut plastic, expensive controllers, and exacting alignments. I could be wrong, however.

has anyone done a cnc knife?
with xyz, yaw and pan
hey, does anyone have a cnc yet that can take user input and translate to numbers?
like, you carve a block of wood using a cnc mounted knife(or router or anything) preferably with the motors decoupled to allow for ease of movement then after you’re done, it will duplicate it’s movements, with a knife movement needs to absolute and not relative as wood even from the same tree will have different textures and grains

My mill was easy to build and I did 90% with cheap tools and if you have access to some nicer tools it would make it even easier. I would have been done in august if I wasn’t doing my own controller, but where is the fun in that. Keep check back I may get some work done on the software in the next week but I make no promises.

DIY CNC is awesome, very well documented, and cheaper than ever. Every hacker space or good workshop can afford to have a router now, and most of them even a decent metal mill.
Hell, if people just took all the money they wasted on trying to get ‘self-replicating’ extruders to work and built up CNC instead, we would see a hell of a lot more getting done.

CNC’s are so nice, but if you build one and go through a lot of effort then remember to add some cooling system, either a simple compressor blowing air or more complex setups, but you need some cooling as the video shows, bits break from overheating, and works gets less nice because debris interferes with the cutting, surely they can add some fishtank tubing and some $5 compressor (as an example of going very cheap).
Of course pro stuff often uses other gases or liquids, but air is better than nothing I think.

We broke a bit because of a miscalculation in the plunge depth for the material we were cutting, not because of a heat issue. The bit had only been cutting for about 1 1/2 seconds! :-) Also, while we are still in the early stages of assembly, we are using cheap bits until we fine-tune the machine.

We plan on adding a waste removal system, but for now it would just be in the way and make it difficult to make adjustments to the mechanism.